In the art of dispensing, articles have been developed which are coated or impregnated with useful substances intended to be utilized when the article is contacted with a target surface. While there are advantages with having the substance present on or near the surface of such articles, there is often the drawback that the useful substance is unprotected and is subject to inadvertent contact before intended use. Inadvertent contact may lead to contamination of the substance, loss of the substance onto surfaces other than the desired target surface, and/or contamination of such other surfaces with the substance. Moreover, the use of such articles to manually apply a substance to a surface of an object frequently results in exposure of a user's hands to the substance. At the very least such a scenario results in a waste of product and is undesirable from an aesthetic standpoint and, at worst, results in excessive exposure of the user to potentially harmful, toxic, or otherwise undesirable substances.
Another approach that has been used is a pad including a reservoir such as a pouch or a capsule that may burst to wet the pad. The reservoirs used, however, have been unable to control the flow of a product from the reservoir. For example, the capsule or pouch is burst and releases all the fluid. Thus, this approach does not allow for sequential dosing of the product from the reservoir onto the surface of the pad.
Accordingly, it would be desirable to provide an applicator that includes a reservoir containing a product that may be sequentially dosed onto the surface of the applicator.